Diego Garcia
Diego Garcia is a British owned Mexican who floats around the Pacific and earns some extra money as an Air Force base. Modern History of Diego Garcia In the early 1970s there was an enforced depopulation by the British. Usually when you apply that kind of a term to the British it's a euphemism for complete slaughter but this time they were a lot more compassionate and they just drove 2000 people from their homes. In a memo dating from this period, the Colonial Office Head, Dennis Greenhill, later Lord Greenhill of Harrow, wrote to the British delegation: "The object of the exerciseis to get some rocks which will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population, except seagulls who have not yet got a committee. Unfortunately along with the seagulls go some Tarzans and Man Fridays which are, hopefully, being wished on Mauritius." In March 1971 a civil servant travelled from Mauritius to tell the native people there that they were to leave and the memorandum stated that: "I told the inhabitants that we intended to close the island in July. A few of them asked if they could receive some compensation for leaving their own country. I kicked this into touch by saying that our intention was to cause as little disruption to their lives as possible." Whilst many were critical of this action, many pro-British supporters stated that there was little more the country could have done. Citing the hypothetical situation whereby if Britain had been irresponsible enough to leave the people of Diego Garcia on Diego Garcia that Diego Garcia wouldn't have been completely destroyed by an earthquake. Britain, they said, would have saved those peoples lives by stealing their land. They went on to cite that many lottery winners lives are ruined by sudden influxes of money and, if they had given them compensation, Who's to say that that wouldn't have happened to the Diego Garcians. Just when you think that a relationship with a deserted island couldn't get any more shameful Britain proved us wrong. They added insult to insult to injury in 2007 when David Miliband, Foreign Secretary, admitted that two, so called, Extraordinary Rendition flights had landed on Diego Garcia in 2002. Miliband had said previously that US rendition flightshad not landed on UK soil, when in fact what he should've said was that they hat so, to be fair to him, he was close. He had all the correct words, he just added one too many and that's not terrible. See, I did it just then. We can all not make that mistake. This produced mixed response amongst the people of Britain: some saying "Why haven't we been told about this territory before. We've never heard of it." Whilst others were dancing in the street saying "Yes! We've still got an Empire! We've got Garcia! We've not lost it! First you tell us the Empire's dead now you're telling us it's back on again! I don't know how to feel! It's like finding out about a child I never knew I had."